George Hunka

Notes and comment

Category: Opera

  • Rienzi in Bayreuth and a word of congratulations

    When the Bayreuth Festival opens tomorrow for its 150th season, it will open with a work never presented there before: Richard Wagner’s Rienzi, his third opera, which premiered in Dresden in 1842 and was for many years his most popular opera in Europe (to his considerable chagrin later in life; indeed, he himself barred any production of it at the Festival during his lifetime). Its plot, per Wikipedia:

    The opera is set in Rome and is based on the life of Cola di Rienzo (1313–1354), a late medieval Italian populist figure who succeeds in outwitting and then defeating the nobles and their followers and in raising the power of the people. Magnanimous at first, he is forced by events to crush the nobles’ rebellion against the people’s power, but popular opinion changes and even the Church, which had urged him to assert himself, turns against him. In the end the populace burns the Capitol, in which Rienzi and a few adherents have made a last stand.

    Rarely performed, the curtain rises in Bayreuth tomorrow, July 26, at 4:00 pm local time. Wagnerians of the United States, however, can turn to Deutsche Grammophone’s Stage+ service to watch it live tomorrow at 10:00 am Eastern time, with repeats at 6:00 pm tomorrow night and 5:00 am on Monday morning. (A Vienna friend offers a few more options.) The production is directed by Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka, while Nathalie Stutzmann takes the podium.

    One of the most moving moments of my last trip to Vienna was my attendance at Mass at the Wiener Hofmusikkapelle on my birthday, where Caldara’s Missa Dolorosa was on the program. So I’m delighted to report that radio klassik Stephansdom‘s music director Ursula Magnes, with whom I had the delight of exchanging a few pleasantries about Heinrich Schütz last year, has been named the new director of the Hofmusikkapelle, beginning on September 1. This is the first time a woman has been named director to the post. Rector Peter Schipka said, “As rector of the Hofburgkapelle and thus as the ecclesiastical responsible for the services in this place, I congratulate Mrs. Ursula Magnes very warmly on her appointment as director of the Hofmusikkapelle, as the first woman in this function. I am delighted by her appointment and look forward to working with her.” I congratulate her too, for what it’s worth; the Hofmusikkapelle is in good hands.

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  • Wagner and Weber for the summer

    radio klassik Stephansdom broadcasts four complete operas every week — a unique quality in itself — and this summer the station will be devoted to the operas of two great German composers in recognition of a few anniversaries.

    Carl Maria von Weber died on 5 June 1826, two hundred years ago, at the age of 39. Despite that relative youth, by the time of his death Weber had become perhaps the most accomplished composer of German romantic opera, producing several operas, some of which remain in the repertory today. radio klassik Stephansdom will broadcast seven Weber operas in their entirety in June, including his most famous opera Der Freischütz and two complete recordings of his one-act comedy Abu Hassan. More information about this mini-Weber-festival can be found here.

    Weber was a profound influence on Richard Wagner, a man not fond of acknowledging influences outside of himself. The 150th anniversary of the opening of Bayreuth takes place this August, and during that month and the month of July radio klassik Stephansdom devotes the larger segment of its programming to Wagner, and specifically his Ring cycle. Both the Solti and von Karajan Ring cycles will be broadcast in their entirety through those two months, along with special programming from Stefan Mickisch that examines over 200 motifs in the Ring and a six-part special series by Markus Vorzellner on the origin story of the tetralogy. (Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg will also be broadcast on 23 June; one can also expect broadcasts of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony [which opened the Bayreuth Festival on 13 August 1876] and selections from Tristan ünd Isolde, perhaps my favorite Wagner opera, if not my favorite opera of them all.) More specific information here.

    I can now see how I’ll be spending the summer — along with dedicating myself more diligently to improving my German so that I can enjoy more fully the rest of rkS’s programming. A full June-August schedule of radio klassik Stephansdom’s opera programming can be found here. More on that fine Vienna institution radio klassik Stephansdom here.

  • Opernachmittag

    I couldn’t let the day go by without noting that tomorrow’s Metropolitan Opera broadcast will feature the new Met production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, featuring Lise Davidsen and Michael Spyres; Yuval Sharon directs and Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts. You can stream this via Philadelphia’s WRTI tomorrow afternoon, March 21, at 12:00 noon Eastern time.

    The New York Times‘ Josh Barone was enthusiastic about the new production earlier this month — “the event of the season,” he says (gift link to his review here) — and it will undoubtedly be worth the time. Davidsen is reputed to be nothing less than miraculous (director Sharon has given her a baby in this one; I’m thinking I’ll be glad to listen and not sorry to miss the visuals), and Nézet-Séguin conducted a terrific in-concert version with Nina Stimme last season. I confess I’m somewhat skeptical of director-centric productions by the likes of Sharon; on the other hand, I was spellbound by the Chereau Ring at Bayreuth and recently very much enjoyed Barrie Kosky’s Don Giovanni for the Vienna opera. The little I’ve read of Sharon’s A New Philosophy of Opera is intriguing and tempts me to read further — what do I know? Still, a baby?

    Event of the season or not, Tristan is one of the great achievements of the aesthetic imagination, an extraordinarily erotic and meditative work, Schopenhauer as music. Listen, and before a second listening read Bryan Magee’s The Tristan Chord.

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